Deep Cove Crier Article October 2014

It’s been a strange spring and summer in real estate. After a less busy than we would have expected
spring, with many great homes not selling, things took off in the summer-a time
where we can usually count on much
slower activity. This spring, we had
several homes that had sat for months with no offers (or offers unacceptable to
sellers)….then as we moved into summer we were suddenly overrun with offers. In
one case a home which had not received any offers suddenly had 3 families
wanting to buy it. In another case, we ended up with 5 families wanting to buy
a home which had been listed for months….and almost all of them had been
humming and haaing over whether to offer or not…and then all decided they would
like to offer. This is NOT
normal-usually if you don’t get multiple offers at the beginning, you won’t get
them at all. However this was a very
unusual spring/summer and the market did not operate as expected. According to
the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, the sales volume in July was up
3.8% over the 10 year average and August was up 4.3% over the 10 year average
and over 10% higher than we saw in 2013.
These numbers apply to the whole region and while we don’t have the data
for the Cove, it seems that the sales volume was up even more in this area.

The activity has continued and over the past 2 weeks we have
had multiple offers on two homes, both selling significantly over asking. There are also many buyers looking but
nothing available for them to buy.

Most of the crazy activity has been in relation to entry
level and moderately priced homes however, we have also seen an upswing in the
waterfront market. Whereas over the past
few years it has generally taken a very long time to sell a waterfront home, we
have had some relatively quick sales on these homes lately and given the number
of calls we are getting to view our current waterfront listings, there seems to
be no sign of this trend slowing. This
is welcome news for our waterfront clients who have been waiting for the right
time to downsize or move on.

So while spring was disappointing, we have been making up
for it ever since so hopefully Alice can stay down the rabbit hole for the rest
of the year…..

If you would like to discuss how the current market affects
your particular property, please call or email me or stop by our Cove office
(2221 Panorama Drive, North Vancouver - next to the corner store).